Many hospitals use hand-written greaseboards to broadcast patient information to hospital staff and thereby facilitate efficient healthcare service. These greaseboards are large and prominently displayed such that patient information is readily available to hospital staff. A negative result of these large and prominently displayed greaseboards is non-hospital staff, for example visitors, also have access to patient information. Thus, traditional hand-written greaseboards create patient privacy concerns. Further, because of public accessibility, these traditional hand-written greaseboards may violate the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, which was enacted, in part, to ensure patient privacy.
Instead of traditional hand-written greaseboards, some hospitals now use electronic greaseboards. Typically, electronic greaseboards are smaller than traditional greaseboards and therefore can be discretely located in areas where only those having privy to patient information have access. However, these electronic greaseboards are deficient because they do not provide for constructing and routing a message. For example, electronic greaseboards found in the prior art do not include the feature of constructing and routing a message comprising information obtained from the greaseboard directly to hospital staff members such that they may provide immediate and efficient services.
There exists a need for an electronic greaseboard that can alert hospital staff to patient needs and provide relevant information about the patient so the staff member can provide efficient service. The presently claimed invention enables an operator to search for and obtain information regarding a patient and instantaneously send a message to the responsible caregiver alerting them of patient needs.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an apparatus and method for receiving relevant data, presenting the relevant data to users, and enabling users to construct and route an outgoing message. Hospitals can provide efficient and personalized service by using this apparatus and method to access and view up-to-date information about each admitted patient and, if necessary, route relevant portions of the information, via a text message, to those responsible for caring for the patient.